An Update for Season 10

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duncan

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Announcing Changes For the Future
As you know, over the past two seasons and this upcoming season, MKU Staff have ran the MKU Conference format. However, after multiple suggestions and feedback overall, we're happy to announce some changes to the format going onto the future into S10 and onward.

What will change:
- Number of teams in each division has changed from 12 teams to 8 teams.
- Conferences have been shrunk to 4 teams each.
- The MKU Season is now 7/8 weeks long (5 week regular season + 2/3 weeks of playoffs)
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Changes to the Playoff Format
With the 12 team conference format, we've had a bye for the conference winners, and then a 3v6 4v5 quarter-final system. However, with an 8 team format, MKU Staff has been split on which format to implement.

We currently have two ideas for playoffs:
1) A 1v4 2v3 playoff system (1 and 2 seeds are the conference winners, the one with the better record is the 1 seed). The 3 and 4 seeds would be the wild card teams. They'd play each other in a semi final, and then the winners of each of those matches would play in a final.

2) The winners of each conference play in a match, while the two wild card teams play in their own match. The winner of the match-up between the conference winning team goes directly to the final, while the loser of the match goes on to play the winner of the wild card team match. The winner of this match would go on to play in the final. This essentially allows a "double elimination" for the teams that won their conference, as a bit of a reward, which the other playoff format doesn't have. This would additionally add on another week to the season due to another playoff match-up needing to be played.

For a clearer idea, reference the graphic below:
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MKU Staff has decided that team leaders will be allowed to vote for which format they prefer for Season 10. This vote will begin after Season 9 finishes. One vote will be allowed per team, and will be held in the #mku-reps in the MKU Discord.

Why these changes are being implemented:
Currently, with 12 teams, there is always one or two teams that sweep through a division, and others that get beaten down for 8 weeks straight. This happening defeats the point of divisions in the first place, as it's supposed to be teams around the same skill, however the more teams you add into the mix the more likely situations like this are going to happen. As a result, we believe that minimizing the teams per division will allow for more competitiveness overall, in addition to less or even zero teams getting destroyed every week.

Moreover, our biggest reason to switch for the future is because of the shorter length of each season. With the current 11 week format, the max amount of seasons we can realistically run in a year is 3 when you factor in off-seasons, and other events on Sundays that go on throughout the year. With this adjusted format, we can easily run 4 seasons in a year, at the expense of 2 less MKU weeks per year. However, it's not exactly a hot take to say that teams would prefer a whole new season playing against new opponents rather than just 2 more weeks of standard matches.

Promotion and Relegation
Because a smaller and shorter format typically leads to fluctuation in terms of transfers and changes during an offseason, MKU Staff has decided that promotion and relegation matches will no longer be used in the new format. Promotion and relegation matches would need to add another week to the season that nobody else would be playing in besides the teams in these matches, and a lot of the time the results of these matches aren't 100% used to determine a team's placement.

Wild Cards
Wild Cards will still be staying in the format change, as with a smaller format, a potential wrong seed could totally change the tides of a season if it was top 2 make the playoffs in each conference. Seeds aren't 100% perfect, so to avoid any potential problems we'll be instituting the wild card system.

Season 10
Season 10 is projected to begin sometime in the middle of May. Until then, good luck to everyone that's going to be in the playoffs this weekend, may the best teams win their respective divisions!

-- MKU Staff
:TheBman:
 

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I prefer option 1, because option 2 is not true D.E. I'm assuming all of these are bo3 scenarios and bracket resets wouldnt be on the table. We run DE for everything else anyway it seems. SE BO3 is fine imo, DE BO1 is as well I think.

That being said, for option 1, there shouldnt be a "1 seed". Seeds arent perfect. So sometimes a conference is easier and the easier conf champ should generally have a better record. Like this season, it should just be this for round 1:

A1 vs B2, B1 vs A2. Or:
A1 vs A3, B1 vs A2. Or:
A1 vs B2, B1 vs B3.

This rewards the winner of the tougher conference with the easier match, most likely.

Option B is cool in theory but I feel like its not entirely fair to the team who wins the first winners match. In most cases it creates a scenario where you have a bo3 rematch from a bo3 match the weekend before, where the result the weekend before no longer matters effectively. I'll have to think about it more but my gut says pass atm.

Also, the shorter MKU season is actually such a good thing for the site. More tournament opportunities and results and more flexible scheduling is super nice. There should be more variety without much actual MKU time sacrificed at all.
 

Troita

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I don't really get the point of these changes.

A year and a half ago we changed from MKU League (6 teams per division) because "if you drop 2 games, your league is over" and more reasons. And now we have a 4 teams per conference format? In my opinion, this will likely happen again, even though the skill gap gets reduced to a minimum, as you have the same amount of matches than in League.

I mean, you're having the same issue than before season 6 but the 3rd team of the conference may get into playoffs.
 

DaniPro

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But with less teams in each division what will happen to the teams that win their promotion, will they go to the next div or stay in the same?
 

Athaway

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But with less teams in each division what will happen to the teams that win their promotion, will they go to the next div or stay in the same?
The relegation/promotion series will be used more as a placement tool (+ as Mikkel wrote on thread, we didn't 100% of the time respected those matches results due to roster changes or team dying.) You won't have a guaranteed spot in the higher division for next season, but we won't throw away those results + honnestly, div numbers are just arbitrary and doesn't really mean THAT much, being first seed of a div doesn't mean you're getting clapped by the last seed in the higher division
 
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BoKeRóN

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Just my opinion, but I hope this format is a joke of mkcentral staff. It's really unfair come on. Furthermore, making format so short will desmotivate people, cuz those members of teams that have less chance to play due to low level compared rest of their team, now they won't play a sh*t.
 

Manster

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imo, reducing the number of teams per division is the right move.
However, I think the lenght of the tournament should be the same as now. Maybe playing two interconference matches would be the key to balance the wildcard probabilities between both conferences, and also to keep the duration of the competition.
For playoffs, I'd like to see the option 1, since the winners of the conference already are in advantage facing the wildcard teams and giving them a losers bracket might be too much. In addition, playoffs being BO3 and not having a reset option from losers bracket in GF is kinda weird.
 

Manster

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By the way, have u though about reducing the number of teams in each conference to 5 instead of 4? I think its a posibility that might work better
 

Jack

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Just my opinion, but I hope this format is a joke of mkcentral staff. It's really unfair come on. Furthermore, making format so short will desmotivate people, cuz those members of teams that have less chance to play due to low level compared rest of their team, now they won't play a sh*t.

It's a competition, not a scrim. You use players who won't normally play in competitions in scrims. The format so short is a good thing. More tournaments can be ran, I think it'll create some more hype around shorter seasons, and also create closer divisions. Usually 1 team beats up and should have been seeded a division higher, and 1 team can't hold their own and loses all their matches. This extends to potential multiple teams that can't hold their own in the division. With 8 teams, and shorter seasons. There is a lot of potential for creating an insanely close division.

I'm going to point out something Dugo said. Subs are just as important as your main/best players. You're a team after all right? But actually, in competitions it makes sense. Say like 3 of your best players aren't available for the first round of the playoffs. This sucks, but you need your subs to step up and win it for them.
 

Félix

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Hello,


I am writing this (maybe long) post to the community in order to explain how unhealthy this new format is for MKU.


Most staff members didn’t seem to listen to me when I was previously bringing the following points with them. The only remaining hope to not destroy the competitive health is to explain to everyone involved in the league how shit are these new changes. While it looks great on paper, I strongly encourage everyone to think about the massive disadvantages it brings. I will explain them in details below. If you like MKU, especially if you play in mid/low divisions, I strongly encourage you to read these details carefully, because this format is unfair. As explained below, these unfairness are more likely to happen on teams in mid/low divisions.


Let’s read again first part of the reasons of the new implement written by mikkel in the first post:
Currently, with 12 teams, there is always one or two teams that sweep through a division, and others that get beaten down for 8 weeks straight. This happening defeats the point of divisions in the first place, as it's supposed to be teams around the same skill, however the more teams you add into the mix the more likely situations like this are going to happen. As a result, we believe that minimizing the teams per division will allow for more competitiveness overall, in addition to less or even zero teams getting destroyed every week.


The part in bold is extremely false, and this is a fact. Once again, this might be true on paper, but there will be ‘’teams getting destroyed every week’’ again. There will be massive errors in seedings again which will kill few divisions again. Why? Because when MKU Staff makes seedings, they are never perfect, and it will never be. And it’s not their fault! It is just impossible to have full knowledge at 100% of all teams at any time (especially those in mid/low divisions), so teams will be misplaced. Just think about the fact that some players (which have a massive positive impact on their team) can sit for months during the season, and the player itself would not have predicted it before the season even starts.


If you don’t believe me, let’s take a fresh example, one that happened on last season. The first 8 seeds from MKU Staff were: 1. Prestige; 2. World Friend Star; 3. High Definition; 4. Requiem; 5. Euphorya; 6. Blizzard; 7. Arcadia Sky; 8. Rozando la Katastrofe.


For those who followed Division 1, there was a team (Rozando la Katastrofe) who got a 0-16 season. If we had this new format on before, they would have been still in Division 1. Would have it been closer? Not really. However, these seedings were agreed by mostly everyone in staff once we discussed them, and no one predicted that RK would have lost every game. Moreover, Novae got the seed #24, which is the last (12th) seed in the current Division 2. With the new format, it means they would have been the last seed in the new Division 3. However, they got a very nice record of 13-0-3 this season and even got a 2nd place.


For those who are around since more than a year, take a step back and think about when we had the format with 6 teams in each division. Was it more competitive? Was it closer? Overall, there were ‘’teams getting destroyed every week’’ still. And it didn’t happen less than with 12 teams in each division. If you want examples (from the very first format), I will get many. But this post will be already long enough so I will keep focussing on the main points.


So how on Earth will it suddenly stop happening with 8 teams in each division (as mikkel states)? Just think back of the previous seedings from last season. With the new format, there would have been already massive flaws (RK, Novae to name a few). Actually, it won’t stop, and this is a fact. It’s just because these mistakes are a direct consequence of inevitable mistakes the staff does while making seedings.


Now, this is the main point of my post. Why do I care a lot about these mistakes seedings? Because these (inevitable) mistakes will have way more incidence on your team runs than the previous formats. It means that teams are more likely to miss playoffs (or get a free pass in them) just due to unfair seedings. In order words, it means it’s more unfair for everyone. It’s all but healthy. Why is it more unfair? Because say in a conference there is a team that is weaker than everyone else in their division. Three teams will have 20% of their season matches against that team, while the four others will have 10% of their season matches against them. The previous format had these percentages reduced (12.5% vs. 6.25%), which means you had more control on your own run.


I think this is better for most people to illustrate this with an example: the previous Division 1 would have been: 1. Prestige; 2. World Friend Star; 3. High Definition; 4. Requiem; 5. Euphorya; 6. Blizzard; 7. Arcadia Sky; 8. Rozando la Katastrofe.

Removing all matches from Star Clan, Mushroom Team, Vertex and Jean-Pierre Pernaut, the final standing would have been:

EU 7-0-3
Prestige 7-0-3
Re 6-2-2
RK 0-0-10
___
wf 6-2-2
HD 6-1-3
Bz 3-0-7
ARC 2-1-7


If I am a member from High Definition, I am salty to miss the playoffs while 3 other teams faced RK twice in a that short season. But what you don’t know is more than half of the staff who suggested seedings wanted Bz have a higher seed than EU. So what would have happened if Bz had seed 5 and EU had seed 6 instead? It would have make it even more harder for HD (and EU too) (based on the results). Please do not argue like it wasn’t the case anyway. As written few times already, these kind of mistakes are inevitable, and will happen again.


I hate to write this, but staff is more likely to misjudge teams that aren’t in high divisions. Sadly, it’s a fact, and once again it’s not because staff cares less about these teams. It’s just because random factors (like an unknown player popping off) are more likely to happen. This means if you are a team in a mid/low divisions, you are most likely to be victim of these unfairness.


To insist more on the unfairness, take another example: say in a mid/low division, where 2 teams are way less stronger than all the other 6 teams and, by mistake, they are seeded in the same conference. This is likely to happen, and it will happen eventually if this format is kept long term.

It means that 2 of the 6 remaining teams will have 40% of their matches against 2 weaker teams (/!\ which is almost the half of the season /!\), and the remaining four teams will only have 20% of their matches against these 2 weaker teams. So two teams have a massive advantage to get a playoff spot. How can you argue again if you support this format? This format is massively unfair. It grinds my gear to see how the staff is currently running into a wall.


What concerns me the most is I don’t get any answers from people in staff, besides from those who agrees with me and Cynda who told me that ‘’we'll try to the best of our ability to prevent any weird scenarios from happening’’. But we cannot argue on this. In every seasons there will be flaws in the seedings, and there will be still, no matter how small/big is the division.
 
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Teeples

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What would you change a format that actually works and 90% of people like

It was highly encouraged that we shortened our length of the seasons to allow more time for other tournaments to play out and fit more tournaments and variety in the year. It was requested we shortened our seasons and we agreed to follow the request.
 

Teeples

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Who asked for this?

The site admins. They wanted to experiment with shorter seasons for MKU to allow more variety and tournaments to be played to try new things and we agreed to try out this proposal. I don't want people thinking we just wanted to change the format again for the sole reason just to change it again, there's a bigger agenda at play here that will be implemented. My apologies if I wasn't supposed to say anything about that but there is a bigger agenda in play at the community level. What that is exactly, we'll find out.
 
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